Modern computing devices utilize a variety of different types of feedback to indicate to users that certain functionalities are available and that certain actions are occurring or about to occur. For instance, when a user hovers a cursor over a hyperlink, visual feedback can be presented that indicates that the hyperlink is selectable to navigate to a particular network location. In another example, audio feedback can be presented to indicate an incoming communication, such as a new instant message.
One particularly useful type of feedback utilizes haptic effects, which provide tactilely-perceptible feedback via various mechanisms. For instance, a touch input surface may employ a tactile device (e.g., a piezo-electric device, an electrostatic device, and so forth) to provide a localized haptic effect when a user presses a virtual button displayed on the touchscreen. Such haptic feedback represents a tactile reinforcement that the user has successfully selected the virtual button, and may be combined with other types of feedback (e.g., visual and audio feedback) to increase the perceptibility of certain actions and functionalities. While haptic effects can be leveraged in a variety of scenarios, haptics can be difficult to comprehensively incorporate across different applications and services that may not have the ability to invoke haptic mechanisms, and/or that may be unaware of different attributes of a computing environment in which haptic effects are employed.